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Dear Shahid,<br><br>
Thanks for your observation re: the potential of telecentres to community
development. As you rightly noted, understanding appropriate use of ICTs
in rural development is the key issue - and there are communities that
have made real progress. I strongly believe that we must avoid the
temptation of thinking....if remote communities are still struggling with
water and food, there should is no place for ICTs at that point.
<br><br>
ICT must be see as tools to stimulate overall development and make
development efforts more effective. We have seen the role ICT have played
in emergency and disaster situations for instance. Yes, in communities in
Africa and Asia, radios and mobile phones have been used to empower
farmers etc. The challenge is to share such stories and strengthen other
telecentres that find difficulties in finding a nitch...which would help
the business model and sustainability so immensely. if telecentres are
not relevant to communities...we can not debate sustainability. I welcome
your thoughts on this.<br><br>
In case you did not know, IDRC has been involved in telecentres for a
couple of years now. IDRC is now spearheading an initiative to promote
telecentre networking at local, regional and global level with a new
collaborative initiative - telecentre.org which was officially launched
at WSIS in Tunis.<br><br>
telecentre.org is working innovators, telecentre practitioners,
researchers and telecentre network leaders around the world to strengthen
the level of experience sharing and support. For more information, check
out
<a href="http://www.telecentre.org/" eudora="autourl">www.telecentre.org</a><br><br>
Regards,'<br><br>
Meddie<br><br>
<br>
At / À 12:41 AM 04/01/2006, Shahid Uddin Akbar wrote / a écrit:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Dear All,<br>
<br>
Telecenter has become the most efficient tool to bring the benefits of
ICT in the rural areas. In many countries, we have seen enormous
initatives based on Telecenter model, in different names - community
information center, knowledge center, Telecenter, rural information
center etc.<br>
<br>
But still struggling to get the Business Model which should be based on
local perspective, focus and obviously need based. It also needs to
consider the location issues, whether in remote rural areas or in semi
urban areas.<br>
<br>
As most of the developing countries are still fighting to alliviate
poverty and basic human needs, it seems sometime that ICT at remote rural
is really fancy for the community people. Such projects also have limited
scope to serve to the local beneficiary groups as local contents are
still a major challenge which has not been resolved yet. Only few pr!
ojects (mainly in India and 1/2 in Bangladesh) have made significants
progress and those needs to be shared and knowledge transferred.<br>
<br>
At this perspective and seeing the broader scopes to promote Telecenter
movement forward, it is the high time to work together and establish
networks among regional actors, and finally a global alliance may be
useful to coordinate the local initiatives and build capacity of the
operators.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
Shahid Uddin Akbar<br>
Coordinator<br>
ICT for Development Program, Bangladesh (ICTDP'B)<br>
Dhaka, Bangladesh<br>
<a href="http://www.sonagazi.info">www.sonagazi.info</a><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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-------<br>
Meddie Mayanja<br>
Senior Program Officer<br>
telecentre.org<br>
Information and Communication for Development (ICT4D)<br>
Program and Partnership Branch<br><br>
International Development Research Centre (IDRC)<br>
PO Box 8500, Ottawa, Canada K1G 3H9<br><br>
tel: (613) 236-6163, ext 2604<br>
fax: (613) 567-7749<br>
e-mail: mmayanja@idrc.ca<br>
skype: mayanjameddie<br>
<a href="http://www.idrc.ca/supportnet" eudora="autourl">http://www.idrc.ca/supportnet</a>
<br>
wsis.telecentre.org<br>
telecentre.org<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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